So Forbes has a Mention of us in this strange "The Next YouTube" piece it ran.

Careful, when you launch the link, to look for the "stop" link right away, right above the "The Next YouTube" title, or it will start cycling through a bunch of other pages. I'm not sure what effect they're trying for, but the one they've got is definitely as annoying as hell :-)

But nevertheless, of course, nice to see Dabble mentioned in Forbes. And they seem to like us.

With user-generated photos and videos pouring out of dozens of me-too sites, smart aggregation tools are an obvious next step: Someone needs to keep track of all this stuff. One such solution is Dabble, lauched by University of California-Berkeley professor Mary Hodder in July. Dabble retrieves videos from users favorite sites around the web--kind of like a web-based TiVo. The video feeds show up at Dabble as a playlist.

The eight employees of digital media start-up Dabble work out of a cheap office, decorated mainly with sticky notes, not far from San Francisco.

They work long hours for below-market rates. Their boss, CEO Mary Hodder, is a 39-year-old Internet expert who has never started or run a company before.

Dabble has received funding from angel investors. But it must fight dozens of other start-ups for attention. And when they finally get off work, the Dabble team grapples with heavy traffic, crowded restaurants and outrageous housing prices.

But it's all OK, because Hodder and her crew are convinced that their company offers a compelling online service that will be a huge success - and will make their stock options pay off.

Sound a lot like 1999? Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area, the world's technology hub, is starting to buzz again for the first time since the dot-com bust. The Valley's infamous start-up community is coming back, thanks to Dabble and its contemporaries. New powerhouses such as Google, eBay and Yahoo are driving growth and hiring workers. Stalwarts such as Hewlett-Packard and Oracle are reporting stronger sales and posting higher stock prices.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-09-11-tech-valley_x.htm

The eight employees of digital media start-up Dabble work out of a cheap office, decorated mainly with sticky notes, not far from San Francisco.

They work long hours for below-market rates. Their boss, CEO Mary Hodder, is a 39-year-old Internet expert who has never started or run a company before.

Dabble has received funding from angel investors. But it must fight dozens of other start-ups for attention. And when they finally get off work, the Dabble team grapples with heavy traffic, crowded restaurants and outrageous housing prices.

But it's all OK, because Hodder and her crew are convinced that their company offers a compelling online service that will be a huge success  and will make their stock options pay off.

Sound a lot like 1999? Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area, the world's technology hub, is starting to buzz again for the first time since the dot-com bust. The Valley's infamous start-up community is coming back, thanks to Dabble and its contemporaries. New powerhouses such as Google, eBay and Yahoo are driving growth and hiring workers. Stalwarts such as Hewlett-Packard and Oracle are reporting stronger sales and posting higher stock prices.

Evidence of an uptick is everywhere. The amount of venture capital invested in Internet companies has jumped almost 75% since hitting bottom in 2003. The Valley unemployment rate has dropped to 5%, down from 9.3% during the darkest days. The median home price is $700,000 and rising. Party invitations are going out  and the buffets once again include shrimp.

It's a welcome change after five tough years of layoffs, bankruptcies and empty office parks.

"Bubbly things started happening three, four months ago," says Hodder. "It's exciting." This round of growth will be based on real, useful products without the excesses of the dot-com boom, she says.

Many other Valley technorati agree. But critics, especially those outside California, say that the Valley is once again getting caught up in its own hype.

Nicholas Carr, the Massachusetts-based author of the book Does IT Matter?, says he expects the tech industry to grow but at an increasingly slower pace. The current frenzy is a "miniboom" that will soon peter out, he says. "There isn't any sign that this new wave of entrepreneurial activity is capturing the imagination of the public the way it did before."

That hasn't stopped John Chambers, CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant Cisco Systems, from predicting that his already-huge company could see its revenue rise as much as 20% this fiscal year. (An acquisition accounts for part of the increase.)

Chambers and Cisco were badly burned by the bust. Cisco shares trade at about one-fourth their boom-era high. But Chambers believes Cisco and the industry can grow without a crash. This time, "The circumstances are dramatically different," he says. "There were a lot of lessons learned."

Many tech entrepreneurs insist that they, too, will not make the same mistakes. Hodder started Dabble  a site that allows people to search, organize and bookmark videos  with $350,000 in seed money. Future funding proposals are modest. "We're not going to go crazy," she says.

Budgets are also tight at Redwood City, Calif., start-up Renkoo. Co-founder Joyce Park has strong memories of being unemployed during the bust, "sitting in front of Palo Alto City Hall, drinking triple espressos, going, 'Man, this is depressing,' " she says.

She started her company, which offers an online service to help people plan casual gatherings, with longtime friend and co-worker Adam Rifkin in her kitchen. She carefully sought out venture capitalists that offered advice, not just money. (Renkoo closed a $3 million round in March.) And she has made a habit of hiring engineers and other technical workers who are inexperienced but have potential to grow.

Playing it safe, mostly

Some of the Valley's biggest companies are also being cautious. No. 1 chipmaker Intel last week said it is cutting 10,500 jobs in a bid to save money and make the company more nimble. Hewlett-Packard is cutting about 15,000 jobs as part of a restructuring. (The No. 2 PC maker is also embroiled in a boardroom scandal related to the aggressive way the board hunted for the source of news leaks to the press. Story, 1B.)

Caution is wise, says Kevin Wagner, an equity analyst at Baring Asset Management. New technologies such as advanced cellphone networks and state-of-the-art video game systems should help keep tech growing, he says. But the growth will be more modest than before, with small busts in limited areas, he says.

Still, the Valley isn't playing it completely safe. Video site YouTube has received $11.5 million from venture capitalists, despite the thorny issue of thousands of copyrighted videos that are uploaded by users. Staffers maintain a chatty blog about the site's inner workings, including a recent video of them goofing around with a dead rat caught in the office.

Venture capitalists gave more than $38 million to Facebook, a college community site run by a 22-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. When a USA TODAY reporter recently called Zuckerberg a businessman, he burst out laughing. "I don't think anyone's ever said that to me before," he said.

And Valley darling Google has more than 600 types of jobs open at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. The search giant, which officially launched in 1999, also offers bubble-like perks such as free meals prepared by a high-end chef, a staff doctor and onsite car wash. (The company also has a market capitalization of about $116 billion, which is higher than that of PepsiCo, Home Depot or Genentech.)

The largesse is starting to spill into the local economy. "We see a whole lot of money flowing out here right now," says Ginny Cain McMurtrie, a vice president at Saratoga, Calif.-based Alain Pinel Realtors.

In the first quarter of 2006, 82 homes were sold for more than $2.5 million in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, the real estate firm says.

"I hear the agents talking about the Googlers and eBayers looking at $3 million houses," Cain McMurtrie says. A home in the tech-executive hamlet of Woodside recently sold for $10.3 million.

That's a striking contrast to the rest of the country, where a softening market has caused the median home price to nearly flatten at about $230,000, says the National Association of Realtors.

Commercial real estate is seeing growth, too. Real estate firm Brandenburg Properties recently offered to rent a 55,000-square-foot office building in Santa Clara to one or more start-ups in exchange for an equity position in the companies. Brandenburg received several proposals but pulled the offer when Yahoo began buying up office space in the neighborhood.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini, speaking at a recent party thrown by the No. 1 chipmaker, said he, too, has noticed an upturn in the economy. But he's not worried, because boom and bust cycles are a natural part of tech, he said. The industry will be fine "unless there's a major economic change," he said. Then he wandered off to sample the party's swanky Asian cuisine.

Upfront investments

One reason for the economic swings is that some fundamental tech products require huge upfront investments.

A semiconductor factory requires billions of dollars and several years to build. Thus, a factory planned during good times often isn't ready until the economy softens. Then it floods the market with new chips, causing prices and profits to fall.

Yet even seasoned veterans such as Cisco's Chambers were stunned by the dot-com bust, which caused the tech-heavy Nasdaq stock exchange to lose 78% of its value in just over two years.

Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, says she doesn't believe that type of collapse looms. "I'm not so concerned about a bubble," she says. "Some venture-capital money is coming back into the tech sector ... (but) nothing like the amount that we had during the dot-com phase."

Indeed, it seems as if most of the excitement is limited to the tech-centric area around San Francisco.

J.P. Auffret, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia, says the only tech buzz he's noticed recently is an increase in Silicon Valley job postings. Few of his colleagues are interested, he says. "There's a more rational view on opportunity and risks. And there's the perception that it's quite expensive to live there."

Author Carr says the Valley's highs and lows will level out as the tech industry matures. After all, the PC is 25 years old, and the Internet is 13. "The really rapid growth stage of the tech industry is behind us," he says. "It's beginning to look like any other manufacturing industry."

Stability in maturity

And it's easy to forget that the tech industry has grown steadily since hitting bottom in 2001. While the industry is still far below its dot-com-era highs, a five-year growth spurt is a kind of quiet boom.

"Before you know it, the glory days will have already happened," says Su-Ming Wong, managing director of Champ Ventures in Sydney.

But Wong says tech will always bounce back, and Silicon Valley will likely remain at the heart of the industry. "Despite every country's best efforts, no one ... has successfully replicated the Valley, and I doubt it can ever be done," he says.

That's what Valley entrepreneurs want to hear. Most of the time.

"People are having fun, but less fun than you'd think," Renkoo's Park says. "Because the way it works in the Valley is: When things are good, you work 24/7. When you get laid off  when everything tanks  is when you have time to spend with your friends."

Dabble (http://www.dabble.com/), the video search service that indexes a multitude of video hosting services such as Dailymotion, Ourmedia, YouTube and so on is another excellent tool for identifying video content.

What they do: A TV Guide for Internet video, the site lets users tag and rate clips found throughout the Web. Viewers form communities based on their interests, helping sort the Web's top videos on such topics as baking a dessert and Japanese animation.

The skinny: Even before the company's premiere, Dabble Chief Executive Officer Mary Hodder was quoted in Newsweek and featured in a series of technology conferences. Now it must prove that it can easily help users find the gems without wading through all the junk on the Internet.

The competition: Though it counts YouTube and other online video sites as its partners, it also competes with them for attention in this crowded and popular space.

Here is the full text of the entire article, in case the link goes bad:

Flickr founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake made the cover of Newsweek for their popular photo-sharing site. Digg founder Kevin Rose made the cover of BusinessWeek after his news-ranking site took off. Online video hub YouTube is ubiquitous, while social networking giants MySpace and Facebook are in everyone's faces.

But what about the Web 2.0 companies that haven't made the cover of a magazine?

This is their week. The Chronicle today highlights some of the startups from this hot sector of the tech world -- companies that fulfill the Web 2.0 philosophy of community, sharing and user-created content, and that fit in the modern gestalt with things like video, music and digital photos.

The only real requirement is that the companies are something you probably haven't heard of before. And if you have, consider yourself hip. Debbie Landa, chief executive officer of the IBDNetwork, which runs the Under the Radar conference, says, "I'm definitely jaded because I know most of these really well."

This survey is far from scientific. Many intriguing companies did not make the list, including FareCast, which tells you when the airline ticket you want to buy is likely to go up or down in price, and Vyew, a utility (like Google's Writely) that lets you collaborate with someone online, and -- well, a list like that might never end.

In the first quarter of this year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, 134 Web 2.0 companies received $869 million in venture funding, on pace to beat the $3 billion that 465 firms raked in last year. And that's just the companies taking funding. Much of Web 2.0's appeal is that engineers can start firms in their basements.

So next year, check those magazine covers for the companies on The Chronicle's list. These guys are growing.
StumbleUpon

Web address: www.stumbleupon.com

Where they are: San Francisco

What they do: A free, downloadable browser button that lets people rate and recommend random Web sites to their friends as they "stumble" around the Internet.

The skinny: Three guys from Calgary, Alberta, developed the software and moved to San Francisco this year. They have $2 million in funding from some big Net names, including Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, Google board member Ram Shriram and famed angel Ron Conway.

The competition: Anyone who leads a Net surfer to something interesting. One could say competitors range from the news-ranking site Digg, Netscape and other news sites built on user ratings, to Google and Yahoo and other search giants.
Imeem

Web address: www.imeem.com

Where they are: Palo Alto

What they do: Users participate by joining online communities, called meems, or creating private meems where they can share music, video, photos, comments and blogs with their friends. It also rolls in instant messaging.

The skinny: Founder Jan Jannick came from the original Napster, as did many of Napster's engineers. In three months, its audience has grown from 50,000 to 800,000, though still less than the millions that congregate on MySpace.

The competition: It faces an uphill battle against other social networking and online community sites, such as the original and newly cash-infused Friendster, Tagworld, Bebo and South Korea's Cyworld. And of course the biggest and baddest of them all, MySpace and Facebook.
Slide

Web address: www.slide.com

Where they are: San Francisco

What they do: It's a toolbar that sits on your desktop as photos slide by, fed from whatever site you fancy -- whether it's your friends' Flickr feeds, or things you want to buy on eBay.

The skinny: Founded by Max Levchin, who struck it rich in his 20s when he co-founded PayPal and sold it to eBay, Slide attempts to organize the sprawling information of the Internet. It's a neat gadget but a crowded field. Net-watchers say Levchin's work ethic, to say nothing of his stellar track record and computing expertise, may give him an edge.

The competition: RockYou, which purportedly has a larger following, and FilmLoop, which has had more exposure.
Meebo

Web address: www.meebo.com

Where they are: San Francisco

What they do: Instead of downloading popular instant messaging services such as Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger, Meebo lets you access your buddy list and IM all you want from its Web site.

The skinny: Backers include Sequoia Capital, the same folks that invested in Google, PayPal and YouTube.

The competition: Instant messaging services from AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Skype and others, as well as copycats such as KoolIM.
popURLs

Web address: www.popurls.com

Where they are: Austria

What they do: Popurls aggregates content from the Web's most popular social sites, so you can see in one fell swoop the hottest stories from Digg, the most popular photos from Flickr, the latest bookmarks on Del.icio.us, the most watched videos from YouTube, and other sites.

The skinny: Thomas Marban, who produced the site, says on his blog that he started it in March, and is now in the top 50 sites bookmarked on Del.icio.us.

The competition: NetVibes, founded by some Parisians, does something similar, including even your Google e-mail and allowing you to add other sites to the tracker. Microsoft and other tech giants have similar products in the works.
Dabble

Web address: www.dabble.com

Where they are: Berkeley

What they do: A TV Guide for Internet video, the site lets users tag and rate clips found throughout the Web. Viewers form communities based on their interests, helping sort the Web's top videos on such topics as baking a dessert and Japanese animation.

The skinny: Even before the company's premiere, Dabble Chief Executive Officer Mary Hodder was quoted in Newsweek and featured in a series of technology conferences. Now it must prove that it can easily help users find the gems without wading through all the junk on the Internet.

The competition: Though it counts YouTube and other online video sites as its partners, it also competes with them for attention in this crowded and popular space.
Pandora

Web address: www.pandora.com

Where they are: Oakland

What they do: Your personal Internet radio station.

The skinny: "I love Pandora. It's potential is limitless," said Kevin Smokler, a San Francisco author and blogger (and, he discloses, a friend of Pandora founder Tim Westergren). "For what it does, it's pretty damn great. Pandora creates a radio station based on collaborative filtering based on your musical preferences. There's more music than you can categorize. It's pretty great at exposing you to new things. It's the best window I have into the Web 2.0 idea that music is an endless garden of varietals you can just pluck from."

The competition: Many other Web sites are in the music game, from iTunes on down. "Pandora is cool, but Last.fm is more 'Web2.0' in the conventional sense of participation," says Garrett Camp, one of the founders of StumbleUpon. "Pandora is expert/algorithmically driven, whereas Last.fm is user driven."
Twitter

Web address: www.twitter.com

Where they are: San Francisco

What they do: A text messaging service that lets people send notes to groups. "You can send something to one number and it's distributed to other people," said Ryan Freitas, an interaction designer at Adaptive Path in San Francisco. "It tells people where you are. It's kind of like microblogging. It's really a lot of fun. Part of Web 2.0 is that it's fun and it's a utility combined with one another, so people enjoy what they're doing while they're getting something out of it."

The skinny: Founded by the team behind Odeo, a podcasting company in San Francisco's South Park (which is led by Evan Williams, who founded Blogger and sold it to Google).

The competition: Google bought Dodgeball, and many of the big cell phone companies are looking to add different messaging features to their menu of services.
Eyespot

Web address: www.eyespot.com

Where they are: San Diego

What they do: Upload your video to Eyespot and use its tools to edit it and publish it on other sites.

The skinny: Eyespot ranks among the top video editing sites, according to trade publications and analysts, tapping into the popular pastime of mixing and mashing video clips.

The competition: Software programs such as Apple's iMovie offer more whiz-bang features. Then there's Palo Alto's One True Media, which also makes it simple for users to create and edit music montages of photos and videos on the Web, then post them online. It also competes against San Francisco's VideoEgg, another site that make it easy for users to edit and publish videos on other sites.
Songbird

Web address: www.songbirdnest.com

Where they are: San Francisco

What they do: Download Songbird to play music from a host of sources.

The skinny: Called the potential "iTunes killer," Songbird was developed by the same people who created Winamp and the basis for Yahoo Music.

The competition: Apple's iTunes dominates the digital music sphere. And there are Web 2.0 sites that aren't the same as Songbird, but are also focused on music, such as MOG, a new MySpace-like site that helps users find fellow Black Sabbath aficionados, and La La, which also helps music lovers find those with similar tastes and swap CDs. And did we mention iTunes?
Revver

Web address: www.revver.com

Where they are: Los Angeles

What they do: Online video site.

The skinny: Revver helped make the "Mentos guys" $30,000 in shared advertising revenues and made them famous to boot. Now the Mentos guys have gotten an infusion of Mentos from the candymaker for future Mentos and Coke experiments. Oh, and Revver has attracted more viewers.

The competition: Too many to count. At the top are YouTube and MySpace, not to mention JumpCut, Fliqz, Veoh, Blip.tv, Guba, GoFish, vMix, Vidilife, iFilm, Panjea, Metacafe, Google, Yahoo, AOL and specialized sites such as Break.com aimed at young men.

So you've heard me babbling about Dabble a lot lately, and that's because it's not only my new job, it's a natural progression for my continuing obsession with building a giant library of video information.

It's pretty cool to be able to pay the rent doing something I already love to do: collect media.

That said -- I'd love to include your stuff! No collection of video is too large or too small, and we can import just about any variation of a structured data format!

Email me at lisa@dabble.com about getting your past archive in and adding your RSS feed so we can get all your content in the future.